


No Turning Back

by bloodlessdandy



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: But all's well that ends well, Confessions, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Insight, Light Angst, Light Tension, M/M, Post-Episode: s01e03 The Great Game, Realisation, Shock, Survival, Unspoken Promises, thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 03:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19803997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bloodlessdandy/pseuds/bloodlessdandy
Summary: ‘John’, this time Sherlock breaks the silence. There is no space for an elephant in the room.‘Yes?’‘I can’t go to sleep.’ He shoots.‘No, Sherlock. Neither can I.’Walking to their respective bedrooms: trivial activity, never caused any distress before. Walking to their respective bedrooms, now: it means turning their back to each other. It’s an unspoken promise; it’s a silent ‘yes, we’ll see each other again tomorrow morning’ – except, they can’t do it. Not this time. Because tomorrow morning was not going to happen until just one hour ago.The swimming pool scene is branded in everyone’s mind. Sherlock and John survive, but something changes between them. I’ve been thinking about this moment as the one of canonisation for quite some years now. Sherlock and John cannot lie to themselves anymore: their fear of losing the other has changed everything between them.The dynamIte doesn't explode - but it starts a fire between John and Sherlock.This is when their first kiss happens.





	No Turning Back

‘We’re here now. I don’t think we can go back.’

John’s gaze darts back and forth from the road ahead of him to his hands. He cannot walk – _just walk_ , and be done with it. He has to blink, look at his hands, check that every piece of his body is still intact.

‘Sherlock, I…I don’t think we can go back.’ And he keeps turning restlessly, feeling unsettled as he never has before. Feeling vulnerable as not even that bullet biting his flesh in Afghanistan has made him feel.

Bullets. They travel fast. Sometimes they reach you and they never let you go, make sure you remember them for the rest of your life. They are destructive as few other things are.

Dynamite, now that’s something else. Dynamite erases you. It cancels your body, paints the surroundings and leaves no trace of you. The second before you are shaking in a vest full of dynamite, the second after you’re a Jackson Pollock on the slippery tiles of a swimming pool.

‘…There’s no way back.’ John bellows. There is urgency in his voice. ‘I’m telling you, Sherlock. There’s…no way back.’

And Sherlock stops dead in his tracks.

Shock divides the world in two: the Sherlocks and the Johns. The latter can’t keep quiet. Needs to fiddle, needs to scream, needs to talk – he can’t be left alone with his thoughts, or he’ll burst; the former, on the other hand...that’s something you want to stay away from. The silent mourner; they retire in their shell, then seal it from inside.

The road in front of them gets a bit darker when Sherlock stops walking.

‘I’m telling you… we can’t-‘

‘Yes, John. I know. I _know_. We can’t go back.’

John is following Sherlock. Sherlock is following his own mind. And his mind is not going to take them back to Baker Street.

But John is right. They can’t go back. 

The air feels so thick and damp that breathing feels like swallowing a gulp of water.

Sherlock closes his eyes. His eyelids have accumulated all the weariness, all the tension and they could just stay shut for the rest of the night, stop right there and find a bed in the alleyway of Sherlock’s thoughts. But his heart does not agree.

_‘I’ll burn you. I’ll burn the heart out of you.’_

His heart is pounding in his chest, too real for Sherlock to keep ignoring it. He swallows. His nose is damp, his cheeks are damp, his forehead is covered in a layer of sweat.

‘Are you alright, John’, but it doesn’t sound like a question. And John is a few steps behind him, glancing at the road, then at his hands, then at the road again. Sherlock’s voice wakes him up from his numbness.

‘Y-yes.’ He stutters.

Sherlock doesn’t ask again. It’s cold and damp outside. John is shivering, after all he is wearing just a shirt and a worn-out cardigan. His jacket remained at the pool, anchored to dynamyte, wires and hideous future memories.

The way to Baker Street is long. And it's even longer because there is silence between them. Silence is still there, an invisible parader, while they climb the steps that lead to the darkened living room. Once they are standing in their living room, everything else outside of the window seems like a world apart.

Every sound, every breath, every light – all of that is happening to somebody else, not to John and Sherlock. John and Sherlock still have the blinding lights of the pool in their eyes, so much that they don’t feel the need to turn the switches on. Also, turning the lights on would mean tracing the next step.

There is silence creeping in every corner of the room, climbing the walls, settling on newspapers and tables and armchairs and carpets. There is silence except for John's breathing and Sherlock’s heart pounding in his chest. There’s John and Sherlock, and then there is the rest of the world _living_ outside.

‘John’, this time Sherlock breaks the silence. There is no space for an elephant in the room.

‘Yes?’ John is standing by the mantlepiece, his hand resting on the surface. He’s still shaking.

‘I can’t go to sleep.’ He shoots.

‘No, Sherlock. Neither can I.’

Walking to their respective bedrooms: trivial activity, never caused any distress before. Walking to their respective bedrooms, _now_ : it means turning their back to each other. It’s an unspoken promise; it’s a silent _‘yes, we’ll see each other again tomorrow morning’_ – except, they can’t do it. Not this time. Because _tomorrow morning_ was not going to happen until just one hour ago.

‘Good.’ Sherlock whispers. His raspy voice is broken. Something else in his system is, must be, because he can’t deal with his thoughts right now. And he rarely is unable to deal with them.

The darkened living room envelops their two figures, standing still in the middle of it. The only source of light comes from the lamp posts outside, trying to let shadows slither into 221B through the windows.

‘Are you alright?’ This time John asks. Not because he doesn’t know the answer, but because it’s his turn to know. And Sherlock’s turn to lie. Except for, Sherlock doesn’t lie. Can’t lie.

‘No.’ He murmurs, then gulps silently. ‘I am afraid.’

John can tell. He’s a doctor, after all. Maybe not an extremely talented one, or a genius like Sherlock, but he can tell fear is feasting on Sherlock. He is shaking. As an army doctor, his medical training includes a page or two about soothing the effects of shock. Easier to do, however, when you’re not in shock yourself.

‘We…have just survived a bloody psychopath.’ John says, and there’s space for lightness in his voice.

‘Yes. We have.’ His counterpart takes a deep breath, then massages the bridge of his nose with his fingertips. ‘God knows for how long, but we have.’

Sherlock can’t see him, but John is smirking. The choice of words, that’s what triggered it. He finds it funny, Sherlock Holmes speaking of a higher, omniscent being other than himself.

Sherlock takes another breath. It’s shorter than the last one. He doesn’t feel the need to breathe, but he feels the need to speak to John. ‘I’m sorry.’ He just says.

Surprises are like twins, they never are alone. John lifts his head, then his lips part. ‘Don’t- don’t be, Sherlock.’

‘But I am sorry. If I hadn’t been so stubborn, none of this would have happened. If…If I had just told you.’ He won’t escape John’s eyes, not if he can see them gleaming in the dim light, two feet away across the room, tangible proof that John _is_ there. And that he isn’t just the shadow of a dead man he has brought with him. Sherlock shudders just to think about it – about John never coming back to Baker Street. About John never climbing those stairs again, about John’s presence stolen from the four walls of their flat. Stolen from _him_. From _his_ four walls.

Because it was right there and right then that Sherlock understood. What a peculiar way, he thought, to discover you are capable of loving. It is the oddest of recipes: dynamyte, wires, and the perspective of not seeing a friend ever again.

Sherlock is spiralling. John, observing him from the other side of the room, decides there’s one foot too many between them. He paces slowly towards him, then decides to whisper the only words that he knows Sherlock will feel bound to accept in that occasion. ‘I forgive you.’

And they stand there, in front of each other, for what feels like seconds, but it’s minutes and hours. Until John remembers he has a body to take care of, and decides to reach the kitchen.

‘I’m going to have a glass of water.’ He croaks. His throat hurts. And that’s when Sherlock’s driver – the one inside his head who carefully plans every one of his moves – blacks out. And Sherlock shouts. Or, at least, he is sure he is shouting. But his lips don’t move. His body does. His arm darts towards John and stops him from taking one more step; Sherlock holds onto his arm for dear life.

‘No, don’t go.’ He whispers.

John frowns, but he is not confused. On the contrary, what Sherlock has just done is crystal clear, just…his rational self can’t quite process it. He is rooted on the spot, his eyes weary and burning and unable to move away from Sherlock’s gaze. John is about to say something, but Sherlock breaks the silence first.

‘I was afraid.’ He whispers, and looks up again. ‘I was afraid that was the moment’, and he pauses, looking for air in his lungs and coherent thoughts in his brain, ‘I was going to lose you, John.’ And he gulps.

John can taste iron in his mouth. He has no courage to nod, but he does it anyway. ‘I know.’

And it feels like the Earth has stopped turning.

‘I know’, John murmurs, and looks at his hand ( _his hand is alright, he is alright)_. He lifts it, then it lands on a surface that’s quite unknown. Warm, yet still shivering, feverish, soft. Sherlock’s skin is an unknown destination to John’s hand. And it takes time for their hands to grow accustomed to each other. The doctor’s fingers are touching the back of Sherlock’s hand, tracing an imaginary route until his wrist. There is silence. Silence that gives John the time to stop and think, and thank God, ( _thank God, thank God)_ Sherlock is there in the flesh and he is not just a figure he can see beyond the veil.

Sherlock needs to blink twice, because their hands are moving too fast for his brain to process each one of those emotions. Their hands are in each other’s company for so long Sherlock thinks – and this is the shock, or maybe brain fever, or maybe something else altogether – that it must be all in his mind. And he _needs_ to make sure John is still there, surrounded by darkness.

Sherlock’s left hand meets its awakening, climbing John’s other arm slowly.

 _Extensor carpi, flexor carpi, brachioradialis, biceps brachii, deltoid._ Sherlock’s fingers follow the trail of muscles from John’s wrist up to his shoulder – all of them slumbering peacefully under his damp shirt.

John shivers at his touch and he frowns. He’d be lying if he said he knows how he feels. He knows that, whatever piece of ‘this is not you, John Watson’ his brain is trying to shove down his throat is plain _wrong_. And everything else, Sherlock’s hands having him, he knows it feels _right_.

‘…I know, because I was afraid too.’ John’s voice doesn’t break this time, nor his eyes break the contact with Sherlock’s. This time, it’s John’s turn to test if he is real. His left hand leaves the comfort of uknown and reaches Sherlock’s cheek.

And it’s weird, and unexpected, and _so damn right_ at the same time. So much that Sherlock’s breath quickens and his brain is about to launch the command ‘flee’, but his body has had enough of all that rational nonsense.

‘You were right’, Sherlock whispers, and his eyes are fixed on John’s dry lips now, his heart pounding, leaping, _bursting_ in his chest. ‘You were…absolutely right, John. Sooner tonight’, and he swallows, his hand leaves John’s shoulder to enter a new territory. It settles quietly on his neck, traces his jaw with his thumb, touches his stubble with his fingertips. He gets closer. Dangerously closer. So dangerously closer that John feels the same drive as well. And both of the doctor’s hands are carefully handling Sherlock’s cheeks, as he breathes the last words inches away from John’s mouth. _‘We’re here now, I don’t think we can go back.’_ He smiles, but that doesn’t last long, because John’s lips are on Sherlock’s the second after.

When their lips part, they are out of breath. Sherlock’s arms feel the need to hold John’s body, snatching him from the darkness enveloping him. They rest, forehead against forehead, and breathe each other’s breath for what feels like eternity. But _eternity_ is an empty word when you have seen death, and John and Sherlock have both learned to greet death as an old friend. Yet, it has never been scarier than when reflected in the water of the pool, facing both of them, challenging them to come to the other side.

They’re in each other’s arms now, and light can barely touch them. Every sound, every breath, every light – all of that is happening to somebody else, not to John and Sherlock.

Not to John and Sherlock, who are now looking in each other’s eyes. And John is stroking Sherlock’s curls gently. And Sherlock feels this burn in his chest he has never experienced before with any other being. It feels right and it is, as John kisses him again. This kiss is different from the first one. This is John’s lips guiding him towards peace again, John’s hand rocking him, the sound of John’s breath lulling him.

For a second Sherlock can’t help feeling gratitude; not directed at anybody in particular, but more towards the events that have lead them to that swimming pool that night. For he can’t bring himself to think that night could have ended differently. And he could be holding a handful of ashes now. And he could have lost John Watson. John Watson: a loyal man, a stubborn doctor, and the love of his life.

That awareness is enough to wipe out every thought, every doubt that existed in his mind before. Sherlock knows, as John holds him in his arms and kisses him, and lets himself be kissed, and lets Sherlock hold him, that both of them are thinking the same exact thing,

_We are here now. And we won’t go back._

**Author's Note:**

> If silent reading is your thing, be sure, I'll love you lots. But, I won't lie, if you left a comment saying what you liked or didn't like or what you think in general, that would make my day. If you're reading this, though, it means you've made it until the end and I'm already super grateful for that.  
> ❤


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